It is probable that she first met Michael Angelo in the year 1536. He was then sixty-one, and she forty-six. "A woman," says Grimm, "needs not extreme youth to captivate the mind of a man who discovers in her the highest intelligence.... She belonged to that class of women who, apparently with no will of their own, never seek to extort anything by force, and yet obtain everything which is placed before them.... How tenderly she exercised her authority over Michael Angelo, who had never before been approached; whom she now for the first time inspired with the happiness of yielding to a woman, and for whom the years which she passed at that time in Rome she made a period of happiness, which he had never before known.... Whenever we contemplate the life of great men, the most beautiful part of their existence is that, when meeting with a power equal to their own, they find one worthy of measuring the depths of their mind.... There is no deeper desire than that of meeting such a mind; no greater happiness than having found it; no greater sorrow than to resign this happiness, whether it be that it has never been enjoyed, or that it has been lost." Francesco d'Ollanda, a portrait-painter, has described one of the Sundays which he spent in the company of Michael Angelo and Vittoria, "the latter of whom he calls beautiful, pure in conduct, and acquainted with the Latin tongue; in short, she is adorned with every grace which can redound to a woman's praise." When Michael Angelo arrived at her home on that Sunday, Vittoria, "who could never speak without elevating those with whom she conversed and even the place where she was, began to lead the conversation with the greatest art upon all possible things, without, however, touching even remotely upon painting. She wished to give Michael Angelo assurance." She said to him, "I cannot but admire the manner in which you withdraw yourself from the world, from useless conversation, and from all the offers of princes who desire paintings from your hand,--how you avoid it all, and how you have disposed the labor of your whole life as one single, great work."